/lit/ - Literature

>>3235057
yeah why not

only if you read them with an engaged and concentrated mind

Are you actually planning that? It's several thousand books.

Will I be well read if I read all of /lit/ recommendations?

only slightly

even then you're required to know latin and ancient greek, no translations for you.

>>3235059
I dunno. You could do a lot of other things with the time. That's about five years straight of nothing but reading. Would take a normalish person with a life and job a good twenty five years.

>>3235053

No. You'll be a mincing, effete and pointless, example of a fraction of the bourgeoisie.

Enjoy.

>>3235064
you mean everything on the wiki?

probably fairly well-read. you'd get the added bonus of Eastern works on top of Western canon too.

>>3235069
how do I get well-read then

>>3235069
it's cute how marxists think they're being dismissive when they say bourgeois

>>3235073
don't pay attention to dismissive marxists, they're anti-intellectuals

you should also consider picking a specific eastern section of literature to complement... europe can get repetitive after a while. india has outstanding poetry.

>>3235081
where do I find a list for eastern shit?

is the wiki enough?

you'll end up forgetting most of it anyway, I'd focus on what genuinely interests you instead of reading things out of pretense

you'll become "well-read" in the process

No, you'll only realize that you haven't read enough.

Just read the wikipedia summaries and then choose a section

>>3235084
the wiki is some, there's also

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtorien.html
http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/GI/EC/reading_list.shtml

to get you going

>>3235059
Instead of reading to become well-read, you should just read and one day you'll become well-read. Don't you see a gigantic difference between the two?

To be well-read only works in retrospect. It's status, not action, not real. It doesn't really matter, because it's just a concept. Say, if you read the western canon and asked /lit/ if you are now well-read, suppose that somehow we say "no", what difference would that make? You read the books, that's what counts.

There is nothing good about reading just for the sake of identifying yourself as someone who reads well. There is something that drives one to read, whether it is curiosity, suffering or to kill time, it doesn't matter, but the reading is the ends, not the means to get to somewhere else (even when it does take you somewhere else).

You have the carriage in front of the horses.

>>3235068

>normal person
>/lit/

I....I don't understand. What are you trying to say?

>>3235117

>>3235053
I wouldn't bother. Instead, I'd recommend selecting a focus. Drama, poetry, or prose, etc. From there go by historical periods until you find a particular historical era of interest then read the canonical texts for that period and secondary literature.

For example, just say you wanted to get into Drama:
1) Read some Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes to cover Classical Greece.
2) Pick up an anthology on Medieval Drama (I recommend John Gassner's because it has Gorboduc, which covers Tudor drama)
3) Elizabethan/Jacobean: read two histories, comedies, tragedies, and problem plays from Shakespeare + read a couple of his contemporaries (Marlowe, Dekker, Jonson, etc)
4) Restoration: Aphra Behn's The Rover
5) Shitty time in between Restoration and Victorian: Richard Brinsley Sheridan's School for Scandal
6) Victorian/19th C.: Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen
7) Modern: Beckett, Brecht, Shaw, O'Neil/, Williams, etc

That's really a vague and over-simplified example, but it's to give you an idea. People specialize and in the process become well-read. It's better to know your shit about a few things instead of knowing next to nothing about a lot of things, which we can partially blame the internet for. All the time on /lit/ I see people over-stepping the bounds of their knowledge and shit-posting left and right about deconstruction, philosophy, so on and so on. Focus on reading well, and narrow your focus to do so. A lot of universities have survey courses to give people exposure so then they can choose what interest them from there.

Good luck.

>>3235145
I've been trying to find my focus forever (not OP). I can't narrow myself to one genre between drama, poetry or prose to begin with. I tried narrowing it down to time period or area of the world, like contemporary or East Asia, but I can't keep myself doing that either. I've read a decent amount within certain areas, but I never stick with them for too long, though I will come back sometimes.

am I doomed to be a dilettante forever?

>>3235206
>I've been trying to find my focus forever

Jesus, what a cunt. Are you geniunely gay? I mean, in the sense of getting fucked in the anus by other men?

Fuck's sake, man, can you not see how much of a wankstain you are? Even re-reading your own posts should give you some insight.

>>3235213
I said I wasn't the OP. That was the only post I made in the thread.

>>3235096

Lurker here. This is one of the truest comments I've ever seen on /lit/, and I'm breaking my silence just to acknowledge it. Thank you.

>>3235251
>i'm impressed by banal platitudes!

Yes.

>>3235251
I'm glad.

>>3235257
you sound mad

Why do people aim for being "well-read"? I could read 1000 books and still think of myself that I'm the dumbest person who ever walked over this gay ass earth.

>>3235279

>>3235281
It could be the "GoodReads effect" where people feel insecure seeing that some people have 500+ books on their shelf while others have only 100 or less. It also could be the feeling of possessing intelligence; however, as you pointed out, being "well-read" does make one intelligent. Also, I know a lot of people who still believe that books are somehow inherently more intellectual than other art forms, and I know others who turn to books in reaction to others who absorb themselves in "technology."

I think people should just read for the sake of reading if it's something that truly interests them and they'll become "well-read" in hindsight as >>3235096 suggests. Or, if people want to actually pursue literary studies take this route: >>3235145